Executive Summary

Within this document, you will see detailed financial analysis and real world scenarios that will demonstrate the exponential cost savings that can be achieved with a full cycle practice management software.

Full Cycle Practice Management Software will:

· More efficiently utilize your schedule by using Resource Scheduling

· Set-up scheduling rules based on your practice needs (by caregiver, room, equipment, procedure)

· Maintain Caregiver Profiles

· Maintain Payer Contract Fee Schedules

· Set-up billing rules specific to your claim forms and payer contract requirements

· Automatically track your collection efforts and all follow-up

· Complete revenue reporting for financial reporting to stakeholders

Traditional Practice Management Software

Managing a practice should not include adjusting your practice rules to fit your software. The software should adjust to fit your rules. We will look at various aspects of a practice management software.

Scheduling

With a typical manual appointment book system, your employees invest much time in maintaining the “book”. Appointment rules are not built in the appointment book. Instead, your appointments may be based on the person speaking with your patient. If you are no longer using the “book” but instead using an appointment book software system, your appointment scheduling software may not maintain all appointment rules. Both of these types of systems hinders your ability to successfully manage all employees time (appointment scheduler, caregiver, front desk personnel) and provide quality patient care.

Let’s take a look at a real world scenario. Patient A phones your office to schedule a follow-up to a wound care visit. Using “book scheduling” (either manual or software) your appointment scheduler must remember the rules for this type of visit. Unfortunately, Patient A is scheduled for a 15 minute appointment, but in reality the appointment includes time not only with the caregiver but also with a wound care personnel. Patient A’s appointment lasts 30 minutes. By the time Patient G is seen (assuming alphabetical patients) all appointments are 30-45 minutes behind schedule.

How much does this cost your practice? Let’s assume Patient G has time constraints and was assured at time of scheduling he would be out of the office within 45 minutes. Patient G is now 45 minutes past his schedule time, and hasn’t even seen the caregiver. Patient G may either leave your office (unseen) or complain loud enough in your waiting room for patients behind him to leave. If Patient G’s visit charge would have been $100, that revenue has just left your door. Let alone if other patients behind him leave as well.

If this is happens in your office, it does not happen only once. So, you must multiply that number by 3, 5, 10, times as often as this scenario happens within your practice.

Result – A single patient leaving your office due improper appointment scheduling 3 times a month can cost your practice $3600 ($300 x 12 = $3600) per year. This cost is in addition to the employee labor costs involved to maintain your book schedule.

If you feel these projections are not accurate, you are probably correct. The costs are probably higher. The average charge is probably higher than $100. And, the frequency can be realistically higher than 36 lost appointments per year.

Investing in Resource Scheduling Software

With Resource Scheduling, appointment, caregiver, equipment, modality rules will be set up for your practice. The system will manage the rules, and appointment slots will be provided based on these rules. Ongoing labor costs will be minimized, as your employees are not learning the rules for each appointment type. With PiMS you will receive unlimited rules capability, ability to define preferences, block scheduling, the ability to define multiple resources for an appointment, plus much more. With Resource Scheduling, your practice can efficiently schedule appointments based upon your practice rules, and reduce its financial loses while improving patient care.

A typical Resource Scheduling software costs, for single location practice, less than $1,000 to install. With the above scenario, you should experience a return on your investment within 3 months.

Lost Appointment Costs – $300 per month (3 patients @ $100 charge per patient)

Labor Costs – Let’s assume an average of 1 hour per patient @ $25 per hour (appointment scheduler, caregiver, front desk personnel)

Estimated Lost Appointment Cost Total – $375 per month

With this analysis, you can see how investing in a Resource Scheduling software will provide a quick return on investment for your practice.

Billing

Billing errors can cost your organization thousands of dollars. This section analyzes manual billing pitfalls, costs to your organization, and proven ways to recover lost revenue.

Most billing errors can be eliminated prior to the submission of your claim. Managing these errors with little labor (i.e. people) intervention increases your overall profit. Relying on simple billing/claims software and/or personnel to remember specific billing requirements will result in an increase of denials and delayed cash. Instead, invest in billing software that has the capability of building your specific billing rules into the system. The system should allow for multiple claim forms. Your users should be able to view claim forms online, and reformat the claim online if necessary. The system should have the ability to automatically submit clean claims to the Payer, without human intervention. And most importantly, the system should contain your Payer specific rules for billing.

For example, some Payers have different billing requirements for the same procedure code. Your system should have the ability to generate a claim specific to the applicable Payer.. If your system does not have the capability of managing these types of rules, you are relying on personnel to catch the requirement up front and edit the claim prior to submission. Or, the claim will be submitted to the Payer and then denied for missing information.

Let’s examine the cost of both processes (manual versus system built rules). If you are relying on a manual or simple billing/claims system, your process will typically be as follows. A claim is generated and reviewed by your office staff. The Payer requirement states the specific procedure code must be submitted with a letter of medical necessity. Your office staff must remember this requirement (in addition to the other multitudes of billing requirements Payers create). The charge is $500. The claim is mailed to the Payer without the LMN. Twenty days later a denial is received from the Payer, stating the claim is not eligible for payment due to missing information. At this point, your staff will either remember what the missing information is, or more than likely contact the Payer for explanation. Your staff will then retrieve the LMN and resubmit the claim to the Payer with the LMN attached.

How does this cost your organization? Let’s assume the initial charge is $500. Begin subtracting the personnel cost to review the claim up front, review the denial, contact the Payer, correct the claim, resubmit to the Payer, and then follow-up with the Payer regarding payment. On average, this would entail approximately 2 hours of personnel costs. Plus, the $500 receivable has been delayed at least thirty days, resulting in a lower margin to your organization.

Investing in billing software that allows you to build in Payer specific rules will increase your margin almost immediately.

Medical Billing Software

Investing in a Medical Billing software, will decrease your billing denials. Medical billing software should provide flexible billing cycles, the capability to build in rules for Payer specific billing requirements, flexible claim formatting, missing element tracking, online reformatting, and a multitude of other user friendly functions to assist your personnel in billing.

How will this benefit your organization? In the above example, your $500 profit is reduced by 8-10% for personnel costs. That is then reduced by another 5% due to the delay in collection of the receivable. Conservatively, your margin is reduced by 15%. Multiply that by the number of instances this is currently occurring in your practice. You can see how quickly your margin erodes, and cash flow is delayed.

The cost of a typical medical billing software is probably dependent on the size of your practice and number of concurrent users. For a small practice, the cost could be less than $2,500 to install. Taking the above example into our analysis, your return on investment would be seen very quickly.

In addition to the features mentioned above, the software should provide your organization with Revenue Management reporting, an on-line patient financial folder, automatic charge posting, and much more!

Collections

Healthcare practices that do not invest in efficient billing and collection processes may find themselves in a cash crisis without resources to meet financial obligations. Your collection practices must be communicated, and adhered to, by all individuals within your practice. From communicating the patient responsibility, collecting this responsibility at time of visit, and thorough follow through until the account is paid in full should be one of your organization goals throughout time.

Understanding where you are today, and deciding on your organization’s goal for the future should be the first step in developing your collection processes. So, first calculate your current days sales outstanding (the average time it takes to collect your receivables). To do this, divide your net sales by the number of days in the period (I recommend monthly to effectively manage your cash flow). For example, if your sales for month is $75,000, divide that by 30, which equals 2500.

Next, take the above number and divide it into your accounts receivable trade balance. For example, if you have $165,000 in total receivables, divide 2500 into that number, which equals 66 days. Therefore your days sales outstanding is 66 days. Once you calculate this number, you can effectively set reasonable goals and processes for your staff.

Payer collections will probably be the vast majority of your collection efforts. Therefore, it is imperative processes are in place that dictates your organization’s follow up procedures. Your practice management system is the key to successful and timely collections of your accounts receivable. Timely follow-up on outstanding claims, denied claims, claims paid incorrectly, and delayed claims is a must.

Review your Payer contracts. What are the terms of payment? Does your state have legislation that dictates payment guidelines? Build your collection processes around these guidelines. For example, if Payer A contract terms is 30 days, you should be following up with the payer on day 31. Then, you should follow-up every 10-14 days from that point, until the claim is paid in full. Let’s examine how not following these types of processes can cost your practice.

Assume your payer contracts all dictate 30 days payment of a clean claim. The first step you perform is to calculate your current days sales outstanding (i.e. DSO). Once you do the calculation, you find your average DSO is 66 days. In this example, you are financing your current expenses by services you performed 66 days ago. This is not an effective means for managing cash flow and becoming profitable. And, you are allowing your payer to delay payment for services you performed.

Ensure your Payers are abiding by the contract guidelines. You must be able to access their payment style and their ability to process your claims according to your contract. Once payer payment issues are discovered, they must be presented to Management, to assist in contract negotiations and improvements. How does this impact your practice?

If your payer contract stipulates 30 day payment upon receipt of a clean claim, and paid at 80% of billed charges, your staff must be able to determine if payment was made correctly. If the payer is paying your claims at 75% and you are writing off the remaining 5%, you are losing revenue.

Patient collections are an important part of your collection process as well. From the appointment each patient must understand his financial responsibility. That responsibility must be collected at time of service. If the amount is not collected, your collection processes must include how and when to collect any remaining patient responsibility.

Investing in a practice management system that will provide the tools to analyze your current state is crucial in the streamlining of your collection efforts. Your software should accommodate the multiple payer contract payment requirements, and the processes you have developed to collect any outstanding receivable. The more you can automate, the less likelihood of delayed collections. These processes must include both payer and patient collection efforts.

Collections Software

Your collection software should allow you to manage your collection process by user-defined guidelines. The software should provide user activities, worklists, and letters to guide your staff in the collection of your receivables.

Creating automatic collection letters is a must. The letters should be as specific or generic as you wish (from small balances to a more rapid letter sequence for higher balances). Your users should have access to unlimited worklists, with multiple assignments based on your criteria. Supervisors should be able to view employees worklist any time on-line. In addition, the software should provides productivity reports to help you analyze what your collectors are doing.

Another important aspect is the software should provide account financial responsibility by both third party and patient. This eliminates staff confusion and allows the staff to follow-up more efficiently with the third party and patient.

How can investing collection save you money? In the above example, if your payer contract stipulates a 30 day payment, and your average DSO is 66, your are financing your operations out by 2 months. Investing in a software that will provide you both tools and resources to define your current state and automate your collection process will decrease your DSO.

For a small practice, the cost could be less than $2,500 to install. Taking the above example into our analysis, your return on investment would be seen very quickly. Investing in PiMS Medical Collectoins will be paramount in increasing cash flow.

Revenue Reporting

In addition to scheduling, billing, and collections, your software must provide you the tools to accurately analyze your financial picture. These tools should be in the format of reports. These reports must have meaning to your organization. Understanding where your practice is today, and how you can improve will provide Management the necessary information to make important strategic decisions.

The software must provide a thorough selection of real time reports that will assist in you accurate financial analysis of your practice. With PiMS reporting, you will be able to view aging reports (by financial party), revenue reports, productivity reports, plus many more. These reports are real-time, online, and retrievable at your discretion.

Performing routine financial analysis will quickly provide to you not only the items mentioned above, but will also quickly provide you the return on investment you have seen.

In summary, investing in a full cycle practice management system will quickly provide effective processes, streamlining of the A/R process, decreasing labor costs, and most importantly increasing employee productivity and your organization’s profitability.

This coworker works in software development. Can he use and abuse my private info?

If you are having difficulty organizing your office appointment schedule or organization’s room scheduling, there are a number of valuable Web based scheduling software solutions (available online); which can improve the operation of your busy office, workplace or professional practice.  When an appointment or meeting is missed, money is lost and time is wasted.

To combat the loss in revenues, resulting from missed meetings and appointments (to both clients and practioners), some professionals are utilizing a web based room scheduling software, or appointment scheduling program; to reserve rooms, monitor client meeting times; and book upcoming appointments.

Dependable email reminders reduce no-shows, and self-scheduling clients are encouraged to book their own meeting rooms or schedule appointments; online.  This type of innovative Web based scheduling software solution ensures maximum scheduling flexibility, and convenience for everyone involved.  For example, clients can book, cancel and pay for their online appointment; day or night.

In addition to efficiency and convenience, appointment/room scheduling software will ”free up” time for Professionals to concentrate on important areas of their workload; online or in the office.  Businesses and practioners can monitor room scheduling and receive updated appointment reports when needed; in or away from the office.

Although online scheduling software has limitless applications, a scheduling program may not be the solution for everyone. To ensure that an online scheduler is right for your organization or business, a Free Trial is available from Appointment Plus- (480) 483-1199.

5 easy to follow steps:

Once you have registered for your online scheduler, simply add the provided “Schedule Now” button to your Web page. When a customer clicks on the button, a window will open. The customer will then “Log In” and schedule an online appointment. Both you and the customer receive an email notification, and the appointment appears instantly on your online calendar. If you are still having trouble understanding how the appointment schedule software works, take a moment to view a demo.

This Web based scheduling software offers scheduling program features like: automatic emails, scheduling reports, recurring appointments, Outlook export, receive secure online payments; and more.  As well, if you would like to customize the online scheduler, and use it primarily for monitoring and scheduling appointments internally; do not place the “Schedule Now” button on any Web pages.

By utilizing a dependable room scheduling software, administrators can customize upcoming events; to accomodate for seating capacity, equipment requirements, and much more. Hundreds of the room scheduling program features, allow for detailed reservations; such as “room with computer”, “limited room occupancy”, varying time-frames, etc. The proper utilization of scheduling software in the workplace, can promote detailed organization; and the most effective use of a company’s time, staff and equipment resources. More importantly, a Web based scheduler allows administrators to schedule rooms, monitor room scheduling, and cancel scheduled rooms; from any Internet connection, anytime.

The detailed online scheduler can be closely monitored and the current meeting, seminar or appointment schedule; can be exported to Excel. Furthermore, reliable email updates will keep meeting administrators and participants; aware of scheduling changes. The introduction of Web based scheduling software solutions, have proven to increase productivity and help individuals, companies and organizations; keep their meeting and appointment schedule organized. Because the scheduling program is Web based, no additional software downloads are required to enjoy the benefits; only an Internet connection. As well, online scheduling software companies, such as Appointment Plus, offer effortless integration with a company’s existing Web pages and Web site. Even in instances where an organization, company or individual does not maintain a Web presence; companies like Appointment Plus, will provide clients with a functional Web site template.

Software for scheduling online is available from a number of global providers; at a range of competitive prices. Before implementing a room scheduling software solution, it is recommended that individuals, companies and organizations; view a scheduling software demo, and experiment with a free trial before making a commitment.

CRM software is a database for a salesperson that holds all the vital contact information on prospects and customers. CRM Software can be as basic as a simple database that holds the contact information, or you can use it to send email, direct mail, and postcards all on a set schedule. CRM Software is a tremendous tool for salespeople that are looking to take it to the next level. Regardless of what you may believe, most salepeople are just masters in process and sticking to a particular process. Once they find the formula that works, the good ones document the process and then setup a system in which all leads are handled. That can mean that after an initial contact, leads are put in a certain sales funnel, then they go through a set of predetermined steps that are proven to convert leads into customers. Until recently, most salespeople needed to be in the office to have access to their CRM System.

Web based CRM is the next generation. No longer are you tied to your home computer, but you can access your CRM Software via any web connection. That means that if there are certain days where a salesperson just plans on making outbound telephone calls, they can do it from the comfort of their own home. Even better for their bosses, this means they can still get work done if they need to be at home with a sick child or if the weather keeps them from coming in the office.

Many employers don’t like the idea of telecommuting because they fear employees might start slacking off. But really, for salespeople who are measured by goals that should be a non-issue. Whether they are working from home or the office, a manager should not care as long as they are hitting their numbers. And too often, managers confuse ’showing up’ with productivity. What a sales managers stance really should be is that they shouldn’t care how or where you work as long as you are bringring in prospects.

So if you are looking for a little more flexibility in your sales career, you should definitely be checking out a web based CRM software solution. The combination of a good software program and the ability to access your information anywhere can be a powerful tool in your sales arsenal. It will give you the flexibility you need to stay in touch with prospects without being tied down to the office. And anytime away from an office is a good thing!

Project Management Software is a web based tool that help to manage projects such as Integrated Calendars, Report Generators, Scheduling, Multiple Projects and Tasks, Files Upload, Tracking, Prioritizing, etc. Project Management System is a simple tool that help managers and the team members successfully plan, manage and execute the different tasks involved in each project.

Why Project Management Software and How Does it Work

Online Project Management Software Tool which increases the effectiveness of your work and the happiness of your clients by making the workflow fully transparent to them. Web Based Project Management centralizes complete project information on to a single server that tracks all the work being done. As a result every member of the team can access to the requisite info anytime. Task Management Software is designed to make Project Management easier and even more cost-efficient; Task Management Software is interactive and responsive Tool that runs on the computer as either a single user or may be shared by a group of Project Managers.

Project Management Tools available that help you to organize your business better collaborate more effectively, plan and track projects comprehensively and IT Project Management capabilities will enable organizations to support their business processes in a Simple, but Effective manner. It is also a great litmus test to gauge what kind of Project Management Software you are looking for and whether the tool you are looking at is a good fit or not.

Features/Benefits of Project Management Software

Web Based project management software has several benefits over the conventional style of managing a project.

Here are a few benefits of the software that may boost your appreciation for it.

1) Cheap to Try:

The dollar cost of a pilot or test-drive can run anywhere from cheap to free for this kind of Project Management Software. You don’t have to waste a lot of time with sales pitches or slide shows. You can try it and see if it fits.

2) Easy to Use:

Project Management Software is User-Friendly Tool and generally can be learned quickly. With Project Management Solution you can create Multiple Projects and Multiple Tasks quickly and intuitively.

3) Low Risk to Failure:

You don’t have to put your career on the line to try it out. Since it doesn’t take a ton of money or time you don’t have to spend a lot political capital to try out this kind of Project Management Software. If it doesn’t work so be it, at least you tried to solve a problem. If it does work, you’re a hero who solved a problem without betting the farm.

4) Work and Collaborate:

Team members both collaborate and coordinate by regularly posting the status of their own work, participating in discussions with other project members, and providing feedback on tasks done by other team members.

5) Multiple User Management:

Since Project Management System can be accessed from any web browser, you may be interested in it to manage collaborators working from remote locations. Whether your collaborators are telecommuters, sub-contractors or working in other branches, you need one unique place where the ongoing activity will be centralized.

6) Calendar:

The Calendar function allows you to view your schedule month by month or get the detailed daily view. You can also create events and assign them to yourself and/or to your team mates, all tasks can be opened straight from the calendar.

7) Security and Access Rights:

Since all employees within an organization may have different roles, they may not be allowed to consult certain pieces of information. The CEO might want to be “boss” and get an overview of all projects’ and users’ activity while technicians could only be allowed to view their assigned tasks without being able to view any statistics or reports.

Online Project Management Software can be implemented as a Web application, accessed through an intranet or extranet using a web browser.

9) The foremost and most outstanding feature is saving of time.

Conclusion: Project Management System is useful for small-to-medium size businesses who want an uncomplicated and effective IT Project Management Tool.

What to Do Next…

If you have any queries regarding the above information or looking for a Project Management Software please contact us at Enquiry@InventaTech.co.uk or visit us on www.inventatech.co.uk

Inventa Technologies provides valuable information on Project Management Software, Web Based IT Project Management & Task Tracking Software System Tool, and designed to help organizations collaborate and Manage Client Information, Multiple Projects and Multiple Tasks, Files, Contacts and Calendars.

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